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Mutilation and Other Carnage: War Crimes Committed by Columbus

ICTMN Staff

10/14/13

Today America celebrates a man who committed obscene slavery, rape and genocide, comparable to the horror perpetrated by Adolf Hitler. Indian Country Today Media Network lists a few of Columbus' most offesnive cruelties inflicted upon the Caribbean inhabitants.

1. He cut off the hands of roughly 10,000 Natives in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Columbus mandated every indigenous Taino over the age of 14 provide him with a “hawk’s bell” of gold every three months. Those who failed to meet orders were “punished by having their hands cut off” and were “left to bleed to death,” Columbus’s son Fernando reported.

3. Columbus combatted resistance by releasing hunting dogs to rip Indians apart. People were “eaten (alive)” and “20 hunting dogs … were turned loose and immediately tore the Indians apart,” wrote Spanish historian and Catholic priest Bartolome de las Casas, who witnessed much of the carnage.

4. Columbus and his crew hunted Natives for sport and used their bodies for dog food. If their dogs grew hungry, “Arawak babies were killed for dog food,” Bartolome de las Casas reported.

5. Columbus spearheaded the transatlantic slave trade. When he essentially massacred a whole race in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, he began enlisting Natives from other islands. He would also ship these people to Europe as slaves. When so many of these people died on the journey, the Spanish turned to Africa for slaves. Columbus' son carried out the first Africa-to-Caribbean slave trade in 1505.

6. Columbus encouraged his men to rape Native women as young as 9 or 10.

In one particular documented example, Columbus shipmate Miguel Cuneo took a teenage “Caribbean girl as a gift from Columbus” when they embarked back to Spain. She “resisted with all her strength” his attempts to have sex with her, so he “thrashed her mercilessly and raped her.”

7. Columbus ordered his men “to cut off the legs of children who ran from them (in order) to test the sharpness of their blades,” according to Bartolome de las Casas. The invaders also reportedly “roasted" children "on spits,” and “hack(ed) the … children into pieces.”

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Send this to those corporate heads of companies that ran ads on TV or in the papers this week": Best Buy,Fred Meyers,JCPenney, Office Max, Macy's, Kohl's, Judd & Black,DeWaard & Bode, SleepCountry, Guitar City, and Sears.

I am posting this on my page for those of you who ask what's the big deal about Columbus day, why are Natives so pissed off? And I'm especially posting this for the braying jackasses who have the nerve to say "get over it"

It's about time the truth be published and we can at least in the light of this terrible news, downplay his achievement and claim of "Descovering America."
Why continue to Honor a butcher of his caliber? If we can downgrade the planet Pluto, we can certainly do the same thing to Columbus.

It's about time the truth be published and we can at least in the light of this terrible news, downplay his achievement and claim of "Descovering America."
Why continue to Honor a butcher of his caliber? If we can downgrade the planet Pluto, we can certainly do the same thing to Columbus.

Thanks for giving historical references I can verify. When I satifsy myself these quotes are considered historically accurate (and no offense is intended here-I'm just a lawyer and need to check things out) I intend to start a movement to get rid of COlumbus Day. This is a damned disgrace.

my son was studying a course at university and one unit was based on America and its colonization. When he commented he thought the Native Americans had suffered a tragedy akin to the Holocaust he was asked to leave the lecture !

Any one who knows what Columbus would LOVE the Native comedy group the 1491s.
The treatment of North American natives by Europeans has always been violent and bloody. Here in the American Southwest we dealth with Don Juan Onate who cut of right foot off of all boys and men in payment for rebellion.
There are high schools and buildings named after him.

It is a shame that this continent that we now call America was once filled with indigenous people living gods way. look at it now, its a very sinful place. Take responsibility and even think about compensating a lot for what you have done to our families.

I can't understand White culture. They're so big on Christianity, but they have furniture sales to commemorate the beginning of a domestic genocide. Columbus was an evil man, but he was only the first of many.

Just think for a moment, thats just what we know of. Remember Harper's apology for residential school's? 50,000 children died. O by the way he forgot about the other stuff. Like experiments on the children to. I swear we are monsters.

My people isn't there something we can do to take Columbus day off the calendar.I had no idea what that thang did to us.I would like to see Columbus day be given to NATIVE AMERICAN DAY. Where do we start to make this change?